When a cigar isn't just a cigar

Near the back of Boston’s Weekly Dig, like the back of many alt weeklies, there are pages of blatant escort ads. They’re typically the same size, each rectangular ad half-filled with a picture of a nearly nude woman. The women’s identities are frequently obscured, sometimes because the photo is a close-up of her ass and other times because her eyes are blocked out, government censor-style. Sexy!

In the margins, equally weird and covert promises are made: The woman “speaks Greek,” say, or she’ll offer a GFE. A friend, for reasons I'm not completely clear about, knows how to decode these things, and gave us a little lesson on Sunday. “Speaks Greek,” according to him, means anal sex. GFE is “girlfriend experience,” meaning there’s all the cuddling and kissing you can afford. BBBJ means "bare-back blowjob," or oral sex without a condom. It’s pretty amazing that these girls are so openly advertising an illegal activity, but I guess that’s what all the code’s for. "No, no, officer, we're just a translation service for visiting Greek businessmen."

I thought about this code yesterday when I came across a weird posting on Craigslist headlined, “Lonely Boy In Atlanta Misses His Caramel Latte Nubian Queen.” In it, Lonely Boy promises Lady Starbucks that their distance will soon be eliminated, and that “I'll have chips and salsa and a big pork chop waiting for you. And I'll always have barbecue sauce in the cupboard...” If this isn’t a whole load of weird sexual innuendo, I can’t imagine what else it is. The “big pork chop” part seems pretty obvious, but what of the rest? Barbecue sauce in the cupboard? What the hell? It’s all Gree-- I mean, uh, it’s all foreign to me.

Posted by Jason Feifer at April 25, 2006 08:15 AM